Here I am back again looking into my drafts and picking ones that have potential to be converted to a full blog post. As I mentioned last year, I have plenty of ideas but I am pretty poor on judging what interests people so would be good to ask.

Title : Library slogans and rallying calls Status : Idea stageDescription : "Google can bring back a hundred thousand answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one", "Cuts to libraries during a recession are like cuts to hospitals during a plague. Just plain silly!", "If we don't need librarians because we have the internet, then we don't need accountants because we have calculators." - These and others slogans and catch phrases have been making the rounds on the net. Who came up with these clever phrases, and how widespread are they? Have they managed to break out of the echo chamber?

Title : My information consumption habits or how having a iPad changed the way I workStatus : Half written?Description : In Dec 2010, I wrote about my general information consumption habits and how owning a smartphone since Dec 2009 changed it . In that post, I shared the tools I generally used and displayed charts showing how distribution of tweets changed pre-smartphone and post smartphone. This is an update talking about what has changed since I acquired a iPad 2 in April 2011. Essentially, I have shifted to consuming most of my content in particular, Twitter feeds, Facebook via Flipboard and Zite enhances it further with a discovery aspect. iPad makes consuming of content even easier, has this affected my consumption of content such as videos in terms of quantity and frequency?

Title : Are our academic staff on science 2.0 social networking sites?Status : IdeaDescription : I have been curious about the takeup rate of academic staff of science 2.0 networks (e.g ResearcherGate, Citeulike). However, it has proven to be difficult for such services to take off and services have folded including 2Collab by Elsevier. Still additional network services like Google citations, Mendeley, ResearcherID and Microsoft Academic Search have appeared that focus on creating unique Researcher IDs but have social networking potential. How many users of my institution are on them now? Are they academic staff? Grad students? How active are they?

Title : Library vendors, databases and journals on Facebook & TwitterStatus : IdeaDescription : Just as libraries have been reaching out to users using social media, it's fascinating to note that library vendors have been doing the same. Some have been targetting mostly librarians others have been handling all users whether librarians or not. On Twitter, some employ proactive scanning techniques to find tweets to respond to similar to what some libraries do. Interestingly enough I find for some databases, one of the best ways to know instantly if some journal or database (e.g JSTOR) is down globally is to check the appropriate Facebook and Twitter accounts and see if there are complaints! :) . I have also been inspired by this blog post about correlations between twitter followers and facebook likes and Impact factor. Other metrics that can be looked at includes Klout, which library vendor is the most influential ?

Title : Things to do with a webcam for your libraryStatus : IdeaDescription : Just a listing of some wild ideas one could do with a webcam.

Title : Gamification & LibrariesStatus : IdeaDescription : Okay, a hot new buzz word people are looking at is "Gamification". I haven't really read many of the books or articles on it, though I gather basically the idea is to use techniques used by games to encourage people to do tasks they otherwise find boring. I have been collecting a list of such ideas done by libraries, and LemonTree by University Hudderfield tops the list!

Title : All my missesStatus : IdeaDescription : I have almost 130 blog posts in the last 3 years. In that period, I have enthusiastically advocated new services as having potential to be the next big thing. How good or bad have my guesses been? Are there any tendencies or biases in what excites me that tend to lead me to go wrong? For sure, it seems I have or had a bias to assuming Google launched services have a good chance of making it, but today we know better, as Phil Bradley notes, in 2011 alone Google killed over 50 services and functions! So perhaps this explains my caution towards jumping into Google+ for the library despite the promise it shows...

So dear readers, are any of the proposed posts above even mildly interesting to you? Or are none of them interesting? To be candid, I have been finding it harder and harder to come up with new posts I have been satisfied with. Blogging quality posts consistently is difficult and I really take my hat off to those who have been blogging for years. Let me know in the comments.

Here I am back again looking into my drafts and picking ones that have potential to be converted to a full blog post. As I mentioned last year, I have plenty of ideas but I am pretty poor on judging what interests people so would be good to ask.

Title : Library slogans and rallying calls Status : Idea stageDescription : "Google can bring back a hundred thousand answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one", "Cuts to libraries during a recession are like cuts to hospitals during a plague. Just plain silly!", "If we don't need librarians because we have the internet, then we don't need accountants because we have calculators." - These and others slogans and catch phrases have been making the rounds on the net. Who came up with these clever phrases, and how widespread are they? Have they managed to break out of the echo chamber?

Title : My information consumption habits or how having a iPad changed the way I workStatus : Half written?Description : In Dec 2010, I wrote about my general information consumption habits and how owning a smartphone since Dec 2009 changed it . In that post, I shared the tools I generally used and displayed charts showing how distribution of tweets changed pre-smartphone and post smartphone. This is an update talking about what has changed since I acquired a iPad 2 in April 2011. Essentially, I have shifted to consuming most of my content in particular, Twitter feeds, Facebook via Flipboard and Zite enhances it further with a discovery aspect. iPad makes consuming of content even easier, has this affected my consumption of content such as videos in terms of quantity and frequency?

Title : Are our academic staff on science 2.0 social networking sites?Status : IdeaDescription : I have been curious about the takeup rate of academic staff of science 2.0 networks (e.g ResearcherGate, Citeulike). However, it has proven to be difficult for such services to take off and services have folded including 2Collab by Elsevier. Still additional network services like Google citations, Mendeley, ResearcherID and Microsoft Academic Search have appeared that focus on creating unique Researcher IDs but have social networking potential. How many users of my institution are on them now? Are they academic staff? Grad students? How active are they?

Title : Library vendors, databases and journals on Facebook & TwitterStatus : IdeaDescription : Just as libraries have been reaching out to users using social media, it's fascinating to note that library vendors have been doing the same. Some have been targetting mostly librarians others have been handling all users whether librarians or not. On Twitter, some employ proactive scanning techniques to find tweets to respond to similar to what some libraries do. Interestingly enough I find for some databases, one of the best ways to know instantly if some journal or database (e.g JSTOR) is down globally is to check the appropriate Facebook and Twitter accounts and see if there are complaints! :) . I have also been inspired by this blog post about correlations between twitter followers and facebook likes and Impact factor. Other metrics that can be looked at includes Klout, which library vendor is the most influential ?

Title : Things to do with a webcam for your libraryStatus : IdeaDescription : Just a listing of some wild ideas one could do with a webcam.

Title : Gamification & LibrariesStatus : IdeaDescription : Okay, a hot new buzz word people are looking at is "Gamification". I haven't really read many of the books or articles on it, though I gather basically the idea is to use techniques used by games to encourage people to do tasks they otherwise find boring. I have been collecting a list of such ideas done by libraries, and LemonTree by University Hudderfield tops the list!

Title : All my missesStatus : IdeaDescription : I have almost 130 blog posts in the last 3 years. In that period, I have enthusiastically advocated new services as having potential to be the next big thing. How good or bad have my guesses been? Are there any tendencies or biases in what excites me that tend to lead me to go wrong? For sure, it seems I have or had a bias to assuming Google launched services have a good chance of making it, but today we know better, as Phil Bradley notes, in 2011 alone Google killed over 50 services and functions! So perhaps this explains my caution towards jumping into Google+ for the library despite the promise it shows...

So dear readers, are any of the proposed posts above even mildly interesting to you? Or are none of them interesting? To be candid, I have been finding it harder and harder to come up with new posts I have been satisfied with. Blogging quality posts consistently is difficult and I really take my hat off to those who have been blogging for years. Let me know in the comments.